Friday, 21 August 2015

As Sartaj Aziz visits, what makes Pak confident?

By Ajai Shukla

Business Standard, 21st Aug 15

The mourners at the August 16 burial of
former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief, Lt Gen Hamid Gul, included
Pakistan’s current army chief General Raheel Sharif, and his predecessor,
General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

Gul has always been influential within
Pakistan’s security establishment. If National Security Advisor (NSA) Sartaj
Aziz appears to hold the trump cards going into his Sunday meeting with his
Indian counterpart, Ajit Doval; Gul and his contemporaries can legitimately
claim credit. As ISI chief from 1987-89, and a member of Pakistan’s “deep
state” for years thereafter, Gul was a pioneer and advocate of developing jihadi
fighters as proxies to create Pakistani leverage in Afghanistan and India.

Even as western and Indian analysts highlighted
the damage to Pakistan’s security fabric caused by “blowback” from a plethora
of jihadi groups, Gul and his ilk --- many of them still in key positions of
power --- continued to manipulate these groups as “strategic assets”, canalising
their violence outwards through judicious “asset management”.

Pakistani analyst, Ayesha Siddiqa, points
out that Gul, like numerous Pakistani generals after him, believed that “religious
militancy could be used, but kept out of cantonments and other strategic
areas”. This school of thought remains alive today.

Sartaj Aziz brings to New Delhi a newfound
Pakistani confidence, stemming from its leverage in Afghanistan. This extends to
the Taliban, other armed radical groups like the Haqqani Network and is also
acknowledged by Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani.

“Both Washington and President Ghani have ceded
a role to the Pakistan Army. But now, even Indian allies like Russia and Iran seem
reconciled to Pakistan’s growing hold over Afghanistan’s future”, laments a
senior Indian foreign ministry official.

This hold is increasingly evident. On July
30, the Taliban announced the death of Mullah Omar, its independent-minded former
chief. Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who the ISI is believed to have influence with, succeeded
Omar next day. Appointed Mansour’s deputy was Sirajuddin Haqqani, a key leader
of the Haqqani Network, which was described in 2011, in Congressional testimony
by Admiral Mike Mullen, then America’s top military commander, as “a veritable
arm of the ISI”.

Pakistan’s growing influence in Afghanistan
reflects Washington’s dependence on Islamabad. Indian foreign ministry
officials see a new Pakistani confidence that makes it indifferent to dialogue
with India. Since last August, when New Delhi cancelled talks after Pakistani
High Commissioner Abdul Basit met separatist leaders from the Hurriyat
Conference, Islamabad has shown no keenness to resume talks.

In fact, New Delhi is going ahead with the
Aziz-Doval meeting, even though Basit says a Hurriyat meeting remains on the
cards. Nor has New Delhi allowed the release by a Pakistani court of a key
accused in the 26/11 Mumbai terror strikes, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, derail the
dialogue. Nor have a spate of cease-fire violations on the Line of Control and
the international boundary been allowed to scupper talks.

In February, New Delhi abandoned its hard
line, with Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar visiting Pakistan as part of a “regional
familiarisation” tour, and effectively resuming contacts. In June, on Ramzan, Prime
Minister Narendra Modi called up to greet his counterpart, Nawaz Sharif,
setting the stage for a meeting in July in Ufa, Russia, where the two were
attending a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit.

At Ufa, Mr Modi accepted his counterpart’s
invitation to visit Pakistan in 2016 for the summit meeting of the South Asian
Association for Regional Cooperation. The two prime ministers also agreed to
talks on terrorism between their respective NSAs, which will take place on
Sunday.

New Delhi has put a brave face on its
back-pedalling. Diplomats argue that the joint statement at Ufa was an Indian
triumph, with no mention of Kashmir, and with Pakistan accepting talks on
terrorism, a subject it would be defensive on.

Islamabad, however, has taken the
offensive, accusing New Delhi of fomenting terrorism in Baluchistan and, in
cahoots with Afghan intelligence agencies, in the tribal areas of
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had
been expected to take a firm line with Pakistan, finds itself defensive.
India’s equities in Afghanistan --- a decade of generous humanitarian aid and a
deep pool of goodwill amongst Afghans --- will be manifest only over the long
term. In the short term, this is overshadowed by Pakistan’s hard power leverage
through armed groups.

President Ghani’s administration has begun
protesting Pakistani violations of the Pak-Afghan border, but he remains for
now in thrall of the Pakistan Army. General Raheel Sharif has already made at
least four visits to Kabul.

Even so, analysts who know Afghanistan well
say that Ghani’s reliance on Pakistan cannot be sustained in the face of the
deep-rooted distrust that most Afghans have of their larger, more powerful and historically
meddlesome neighbour. According to this perspective, Ghani, like his
predecessor, Hamid Karzai, will have only a short-lived honeymoon with the
Pakistan Army, after which its influence will wind down fast.

New Delhi’s diplomats also hope that
Washington’s stance will change. The US Congress’ disenchantment with Pakistani
duplicity has grown as the Taliban has killed hundreds of Americans, but the US
State Department has condoned Pakistan’s actions to “keep channels open with
Islamabad”. This however could change as campaigning gets under way for the US
presidential election in November, and American public opinion pushes candidates
to take a hard line against Pakistan.

4 comments:

Enough handling these hurriyat clowns with kid-gloves !! Just put them on an Airplane and send them to Pakistan. While they are transiting Indian Airspace, shoot a Surface to Air Missile on it. They have served their purpose. Now that J&K state wants peace and development, not Islamic Terrorism.